"In October Commtouch reported an 18% drop in global spam levels (comparing September and October). This was largely attributed to the closure of Spamit around the end of September. Spamit is the organization allegedly behind a fair percentage of the worlds pharmacy spam. Analysis of the spam trends to date reveals a further drop in the amounts of spam sent during Q4 2010. December's daily average was around 30% less than September's. The average spam level for the quarter was 83% down from 88% in Q3 2010. The beginning of December saw a low of nearly 74%."

Funny part is all the love for spam in the Pacific can be traced back to WWII. My great uncle was there and talked about how they would literally get crates of spam and had grown so sick of the stuff they would trade it for ANYTHING an islander had, so soon the islanders had crates of the stuff too.

Since many of their traditional recipes worked just fine with it, it was easy to store and use, and they had so dang much of it, it simply became a part of their diets like pizza or burgers here. Last I heard even McDonald's serves spam in the pacific region. Funny how something from all those years ago could still affect them today huh?

As for TFA I wonder if spam is dying simply because they really don't have much to sell anymore. The big sellers when I was younger were fake software, porn, and the ever popular "make your winkie bigger" pills. Well know we have smiling Bob selling Winkie pills, porn is free, most software you can either get cheap or take a "wink wink" approach to home piracy like MSFT and Adobe, so really what is left?

All I see in any great numbers in my spam folders anymore is the classic Nigerian scam, and luckily the news has plastered that scam all over enough that it seems to be getting harder to find idiots to fall for it. That is why I think we are seeing a rise in things like ransomware, there is simply dwindling profits in the traditional scams. I can tell you at my repair shop the "Security Tool/ Fake AV" infections seem to be climbing fast, and I bet most of that can be traced back to the same guys that used to push winkie pills and porn. With decent spam filters and legal sources there just ain't big bucks in email anymore.